Tyler Cavanaugh had been weighing a change since Wake Forest announced that its men's basketball coach had resigned.

Jeff Bzdelik recruited the former Jamesville-DeWitt star and had developed a close relationship with the forward. And while Cavanaugh liked Bzdelik's replacement Danny Manning, as he searched his conscience and considered his future, he decided Wake no longer fit his perceptions of how his college career should take shape.

Cavanaugh asked for his release from Wake and it was granted. As he drove from Winston-Salem to Syracuse this morning, he explained the rationale behind his decision to transfer.

"I wrote down my goals -- I want to make the NCAA Tournament, I want to compete for a conference championship," Cavanaugh said. "I mean, I loved my time at Wake. My two years were great; up and down and I learned a lot about myself as a player. But I felt like it was time for me to move on to something else."

Cavanaugh met with Manning and his staff. He liked the former Kansas star, who left a successful Tulsa program to take the Wake job. "It was nothing he said or did," Cavanaugh said, that triggered the transfer.

His close friend on the Wake team, Arnaud William-Adala Moto, had earlier declared his intention to transfer. Wake lost a capable senior in Travis McKie to graduation. And while Cavanaugh will miss Winston-Salem, ultimately he did not believe Manning could lift the Demon Deacons to the top of the ACC in Cavanaugh's two remaining years of college basketball eligibility.

The ACC, already top-heavy with the likes of Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse, will add Louisville this season, thereby adding another obstacle to an already difficult climb up the conference standings.